I Was Trapped In An Elevator On My Birthday, But No One Cared Chapter 05

I Was Trapped In An Elevator On My Birthday, But No One Cared Chapter 05

I found a cheap motel near Union Station.

Eighty dollars a night. The room was cramped, the window faced a back alley, and the walls were paper-thin.

Someone was fighting in the next room in the middle of the night, and the smell of grease from the bar downstairs drifted up nonstop.

But lying in that stiff, unforgiving bed, I felt steadier than I ever had at home.

I washed up, sat on the edge of the bed, and blocked everyone.

Julian. Mom. Dad. Serena. And every relative who’d been there that night and hadn’t said a single word for

After it was done, I stared at the empty chat screen for a long time.

There was no rush of satisfaction. Just a belated, bone-deep exhaustion.

Like I’d been carrying something impossibly heavy for miles, and now that I’d finally set it down, I didn’t even

have the strength to cry.

I’d been planning to leave for a while. I just hadn’t had the guts to follow through.

Half a year earlier, I’d sent my résumé to a small publishing company in Sunnyside.

That city was right on the ocean, more than eleven hundred miles from home.

The company wasn’t huge, and the pay wasn’t amazing, but the work-editorial planning-was exactly what I

loved.

After I passed the interview, they asked when I could start. I’d been stalling, never replying.

Now, I opened my email and sent my answer to Sunnyside: [I can start as soon as possible.]

They replied fast. [Welcome aboard. Report next Monday and you’re all set.]

I booked an Amtrak ticket right after.

The next day, the slap mark on my face had already faded a lot.

I looked in the mirror and forced a smile. Let’s start a new life, Mira. You and me.

At first, nobody from home came looking for me.

They were probably still mad, figuring I’d eventually come crawling back the way I had when I was little.

Back then, after my mom yelled at me and I hid in the stairwell, not one of them came to find me.

In the end, I got too cold, dried my own tears, and went back inside. My mom saw me and just said, “So you finally realize you were wrong.”

Every time after that, it was the same. I was the one who caved first. I apologized first. I swallowed my hurt and pretended nothing happened.

So this time, they assumed I’d come back too.

That was, until Julian couldn’t find his tie and called me.

The automated voice came through the earpiece. “The number you’ve dialed is not in service.”

He couldn’t believe it and fired off an iMessage. When that red “Not Delivered” alert popped up, the color

drained right out of his face.

He rushed to my house that same night.

Downstairs, he ran into the maintenance guy working on the elevator and overheard him talking.

“That elevator malfunction a couple days ago? Seriously dangerous. It shot straight from the first floor all the way up to the twentieth, then just seized up. Almost went into freefall right after.”

“I heard there was just some young woman inside. Trapped for a full hour. No idea how she made it through

that.”